


Ruthless

by Calliopy



Category: Baldur's Gate, Forgotten Realms
Genre: Backstory, Drow, Evil Charname, Original Characters - Freeform, Pre-Canon, Slight Non-Canon, Underdark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 23:19:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6631213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calliopy/pseuds/Calliopy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A wordy write up of how my Bhaalspawn drow survived the twisted world of the underdark and ended up in Candlekeep prior to the start of Alaundo’s Prophecy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ruthless

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for everything you would expect in the Underdark, but especially violence and abuse.

Vechsan was born into a minor house in a minor Underdark city, the fifth female child of a highly ambitious and favoured Matron Mother, a century or so before the Bhaalspawn were awakened and the troubles on the Sword Coast began. Unlike her sisters, all powerful priestesses and much praised in honour of the house, she possessed no magical ability whatsoever. Regardless, she was tolerated, if not favoured, for her ruthlessness and talent for strategic scheming, and an innate gift for poisons and bladed weapons. 

Skinny, even for a drow, she was bullied and picked on by her priestess sisters for her lack of magical talent and her small stature, and by the house Patron, who knew or suspected that she was not of his line. To their frustration, she was rarely phased by their taunts and blows, being more likely to grin and invite more taunts, or press herself forward onto a blade, than to show fear or shame. Her recklessness and unwillingness to submit earned her the cautious favour of her Matron, and she was put to work under the joint tutelage of the house weapons master and assassin - a test, of sorts, for what female would tolerate training under the remit of not one, but two males? Nevertheless, she remained unphased at the insults to her status and became a powerful assassin in her own right, and an asset to her house. The grudging respect of her sisters was earned and she was instrumental in the destruction of three other minor houses and the advancement of her own, to some status on her part.

Until Kalizien returned.

[[MORE]]

Her little sister, within a decade of her own age, had more magical talent than any other female in five generations of her house and had been sent away to apprentice as a sorceress of some considerable skill and even more ambition. Powerful and favoured as she was, Kalizien still loathed Vechsan for her favour with their Matron, and her perceived barriers to Kali’s status in her house. As fourth female (for two of their sisters had tragically perished in the wars between houses, in perfectly explicable circumstances which could in no possible way be connected to Vechsan), removing her assassin sister was a natural step, but for all her power, Kali feared her sister’s ruthless ambition. Both would have been affronted to hear how much of their natures they shared - capricious, scheming and utterly disinterested by anything other than their own routes to power. 

It took five years before Kali made her move, but when she did, it shook the foundations of her house. Six nobles, including the weapons master (the former master assassin had been long since dispatched and Vechsan instated in his place), and more than a third of the numerous commoners attached to the ambitious house were slaughtered in violent, bloody, gauche fashion, all seemingly by house members loyal to Vechsan and mercenaries with her name on their lips. The weapons master was slain by Vechsan’s own blades, with one of her characteristic poisons in his blood. Kali’s glee and her gloating, sanguine smile as they hauled the assassin in front of her Matron in chains was only to be expected. That there was no love lost between them was common knowledge.

She endured three days of creative torture before she escaped, and fled. For the first time in her life, her ruthless cunning became a matter of survival rather than advancement. She cut her hair, changed her clothes, and went hooded and masked at all times. For some time, she lived hand to mouth on the streets of her home city, relying on her stealth and weapon skill to survive through mugging, theft and mercenary work, avoiding as much as possible any news of her survival reaching the ears of her now-infamous and highly favoured sister. She changed her name, going by Vex, lost weight she did not have to lose and became consumed by her sustaining desire to end Kali’s miserable life in the most degrading and humiliating fashion possible. 

She lost herself a little, existing in this way for some time, but her mind and her nature, although both as somewhat fractured as they had always been, continued at the core to be that of a pragmatic, ruthless and ambitious survivor. Slowly, over a few months, the plan came together in her mind. She had never had much of a figure to begin with (that would come later, after her first century, some years of proper meals, and her discovery of her true heritage), and her scraped existence made disguising herself as a male all the more easy. She marked her own face with roughly mixed chemical toxins, biting down on her belt to keep from screaming. She washed her eyes out with another concoction which burned like the Hells and left her blind and vulnerable and starving for two full days, but bleached the crimson of her eyes to a washed out grey. She cut her hair again, and bribed, charmed and outright fought her way into the all-male fighters guild. 

Having already been well trained, and appearing much younger and weaker than her true age thanks to her small stature and delicate features, she passed easily for a young drow male, managing through guile and violence to avoid being seen compromisingly undressed, although she had very little to hide from in truth - what drow female would willingly accept the subservience of playing the role of a male? Her experience served her well, although she played a subtle game, avoiding rising above the top five, yet never quite being ousted despite the shifting ranks above and beneath her. She focused all her attention on her true goal - gaining enough power and influence behind the scenes through manipulation and political maneuverering to find favour with a powerful house. Once there, she would work her way into a position of influence and rouse their efforts against her former house, razing her upstart sister’s power into the ground, perhaps removing her hands or her tongue before sending her out into the streets to live as she had forced Vex to live. 

Only three times in the ten years at the guild did anyone see through her disguise. The first two - a fellow student and a low-ranking master - were delighted to discover such a delicious secret, then intrigued by the young female so seemingly desperate to maintain her cover that she was willing to do anything, to _submit_ to them, to buy their silence. Each took full advantage of their heady power over this naive, desperate commoner.

Each was found dead, bloody, missing fingers and eyes and other less savoury things the next day.

The third - also a student - was a contemporary of hers, a fellow favoured candidate, and sometime ally within the shifting political landscape of the upper tiers of achievement. Secondboy and weapons master-to-be of a powerful house, he was not found dead. Instead, she bought his silence with her body and her influence, and an uneasy truce of mutual benefit segued into a more solid alliance, then a preferred partnership. He kept her secret and made it known that the ‘boy’ was his protege, she lent him the benefit of her ‘natural’ skills (she played a talented commoner, even to him - he never knew her history, her training or true age) at intrigue and blades. If the other candidates noticed - and few did, too caught up in their own ambitions and schemes - that the two favoured students snuck together into bedrooms and alcoves, well, the domination of one weaker male by another was hardly an uncommon sight in such a matriarchal society. She found fulfilment of a sort in their alliance, seeing as she did how convenient and how useful it was to her schemes. But her sister, her suffering, her survival, these things had broken a mind already fractured from the start. She was all cold angles and business and calculation, far removed from the hot, reckless joy in living which had once defined her. It didn’t occur to her until much, much later what her fulfilment in those months might have meant, why he defended her with so little to gain. By the time she did, it was already too late. 

He was named first among them at the end of their training, Vex second, by her own design. After they left, he took her with him to his house, where he was lauded and praised for the honour he brought to them. At the right moment, he presented her to his Matron, with glowing tales of her value and her skill. The Matron sneered at her - she was second after all. A female, second among males. Vex, of no particular house, successful only through hanging off the cloak of her lover. What possible value could she be, said the Matron, to her house?

So Vex spun, and slashed, and she cut his throat in front of them. 

She felt nothing as he fell. Her face showed no trace of fear, or pain, or regret. She turned away from him as he died, defending herself from the instant, violent response of his house, and she never saw the betrayal on his face, or the strange, fleeting flicker of pain.

She cut down more than twenty of them before the Matron held up her hand, appraisal on her face, and they stopped. Vex made her case - take me on, she said. Your Secondboy was favoured, and I cut him down. Your personal guards were your best, and I took them on. Make me your weapons master instead. Why have a son, however fine, when you can have a daughter?

The Matron drummed her fingers on the arm of her throne as she considered. She glanced at her daughters, ranged around the throne, and Vex knew they conversed in their minds. They looked her over like a mount or a hunting dog, all calculating stares and hungry eyes. In the end, the Matron nodded, once. And so, she crept into their ranks, insinuating herself into minds and routines, overseeing the defence and training and raids. And she waited. And she whispered.

It almost worked. It was simplicity itself to convince them to move against the upstart house, her former home, particularly when they made such bold and successful grasps for power. She praised and flattered and served as well as they could have hoped. Better, in fact, even more so once the Matron claimed her as a favoured lover. The plan was simple enough - construct the fabrication of an alliance against a stronger house, gain their confidence, then allow them to fall, secure in the knowledge that none would deign to support those foolish enough to be so obviously betrayed. They did not ask how she knew so much of their target, and she did not say, although they must have suspected. They kept the fiction of her gender outside the house, and she waited and watched, restless and flushed the nearer she came to her goal. 

It almost worked. It would have worked. It should have worked.

The delegation came with gifts and new slaves and mercenaries and males she didn’t recognise - perhaps even brothers she had never known. They would send her eldest sister, naturally, a powerful priestess, and the respectful choice for such a union. She stood by her new Matron, confident in her disguise, faintly interested to see how her sister might have changed, and curious of the new wealth her former house had accrued on her absence.

When Kalizien walked in, she froze. Their eyes met, and although her disguise was complete and convincing, Kali looked at her and she knew. She _knew_.

That night, she paced the hall. She urged her new sisters forward, to strike now, to move before the dangerous sorceress did. They must have known then, if they hadn’t before, but they were resolute, committed to their machinations. Vex could have screamed in frustration. The Matron spoke harshly to her with a fierce backhand that floored her, and she stepped back and bowed and grovelled. 

She was in her rooms, perched on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall and flexing and clenching her fingers on the edge of the sheets when Kali appeared. Vex never knew where she found the spell, from what ancient tome or wizened spirit. Kali’s eyes were madness itself, too wide and looking through her, and before she could get to her blades, before she could snarl defiance or call for backup, Kali shoved her, hard, in the chest, and she fell back through the bed and she was falling, falling through the air and into an explosive burst of pain and brightness.

She should have ended up in the Hells, or the Demonweb Pits, or any of the torturous planes which her sister had doubtlessly intended to send her to. She should have been ripped apart, she should have had demons and driders feasting on her flesh. For several long moments, she thought she _was_ in those places as the ground slammed into her, fracturing bones, and the searing, burning light rendered her nauseous and agonised and blind. For several days she was incapacitated, incensed, terrified of what would happen and unsure why she would be kept alive, doubting very much it could be for any good reason. The disorientation only increased when her vision returned and she saw only the books and the dust and the pale, paunched monks surrounding her. 

She never knew why Gorion saved her. He must have known what she was. They tolerated her, after a time, but they never wanted her there. He could only have caged her to try to break her somehow, to change her nature, to mould the future into his own design. She could almost admire that. Almost. She delighted at first, in meeting his eyes over the little girl’s head as she taught her how to pick a lock, how to palm a coin from a pocket, how to wrap shadow around her like a cloak. She taunted him with her corruption of the child, whom he so obviously favoured and so obviously loved. She dripped poison from her lips into the ears of travellers and monks alike and broke friendships and started heated wars of hearts and minds as she broke his little world with all the tools at her disposal piece by piece.

She would never be broken by a simpering, nosy, male.

Still, for all her delight in tormenting him, she found herself astonished at how she came to value the girl. Never before had a child simply wrapped their arms around her, laughed at her threats, screamed the building down when a lock wouldn’t open just so. She followed Vex around like a puppy, bringing her things from pockets and hay bales, plucking at the hem of her cloak, braiding her hair as it grew out. She whispered her secrets in the dark, but not in the manner to which Vex was accustomed. There was humour there, warmth. Why she thought Vex would care or have anything to tell her about the stable boy mystified her, but her nature was a fascinating puzzle, the little entertainment she was able to know beyond the knowledge and the power of the endless tomes. The girl had even less magic than Vex then, not even able to limn her fingertips with faerie fire or drop darkness around a corner. Vex taught her hand signs and thieving, but could not bring herself to shatter the puzzle box by speaking of poisons and knives… Not yet. There would be time enough to break her later. She would know her mind first. The girl would curl in her lap, and coo and laugh as Vex spoke to her about cathedrals of carved stalagmites, and glowing pillars and the whirling dance of houses and power. 

Vex wondered later if her attachment to Imoen was the taint pulling towards itself like a compass. Had Kali had been as they were, had their intense connection been Bhaal’s essence? She wondered if her Secondboy had loved her. Had he seen her as she did her foster-sister? A novelty and a puzzle? Something to be necessarily broken, in time, but not yet? Or had he truly felt for her as the girl professed to for every farmhand who winked at her? Had she changed on the surface or had she simply learned to survive? She read, and studied and pondered and schemed, a prisoner, but a patient one, with no particular direction to go, but all the time in the world to figure it out.

And so it was that, many years later, she sat in the cool shade of an alcove with a pink-haired head in her lap, when a cautious messenger approached her. He greeted her hesitantly, fearfully, stuttering apologies until she raised an eyebrow at him.

‘I’m sorry, Lady, to disturb you, but, uh… I have a message. Gorion would like to speak with you. Urgently.’

Vex grinned.


End file.
